1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technique for a consumer to generate customized design drawings and purchase a full set of construction drawings from the customized design drawings, preferably over the Internet.
2. Description of the Related Art
Over the last decade, new homebuyers and builders have concentrated on lowering the initial cost of a new home and on preserving that home's resale value. These buyers and builders are not interested in having their new home be an individual expression of their personal taste, nor are they willing to pay for custom architectural plans. The houses which people actually buy or build have become increasingly standardized and conform to a small number of classic stock plans and types. However, people still want to make small changes to these stock plans so that the house fits their perceived needs.
These trends have fueled the growth of the stock plan industry that sells pre-drawn construction drawings at a fraction of the cost of custom plans drawn from scratch. Traditionally, these plans are generally hand-drafted drawings that are fixed entities and cannot be easily modified or customized to suit the buyer. In the past, if a consumer liked a set of plans, but wanted to make a few changes, it was easier to throw out the old drawings and start over.
However, advances in computer aided drafting (CAD) technology have revolutionized the architectural industry. CAD technology has provided new tools for the production of architectural plans. In the computer era, a few mouse clicks can create a new set of plans from an existing set. Individual sets of plans can be customized by including different layers or features that can be turned on and off as required. A new process of selecting a stock plan is now possible where the buyer literally designs their own home by first choosing a basic style and plan and then choosing the specific architectural features they prefer.
Many new and innovative CAD design applications have been marketed to homebuyers. These products produce a generalized design and floor plans, but most do not contain the tools necessary for drawing a fully detailed, dimensioned, and annotated set of construction drawings. Such drawings are a necessary part of any contract for construction. The products that do contain these tools, such as AUTOCAD® are generally too complicated or time consumptive for a lay person to use for home design.
Additionally, the advent of virtual landscapes and buildings in computer games and other computer related simulations are similar in some regards to home design, but these layouts are not necessarily true to the laws of physics, and certainly have not been rendered in sufficient detail to allow home construction therefrom. Furthermore, virtual buildings are also not something that a casual consumer would be able to create in a short amount of time given presently available tools.
Finally, the emergence of commerce over the Internet, and more specifically over the World Wide Web, has received much attention of late. One of the end results of this emergence is the reduction of the consuming populace in many physically distant localities into one relatively homogenous community, with both a standardization of price and expectation from the consuming body.
Thus, there remains a need for a computer based program accessible over the Internet that would allow a casual consumer to create a customized variation from a stock floor plan, and secure therefrom construction drawings that would enable the consumer to build their customized home.